Today’s Scripture Reading (June 18,
2014): Zechariah 3
In ancient
Israel, there was a belief that almost bordered on a fantasy. It was the cult
of the Messiah, and with every generation it seemed that the cult grew – and for
Israel the expectations of the Messiah continually changed. But ultimately the
cultic expectations became a belief in the return of a king like King David.
Under the reign of the Messiah, Israel would once again be the political player
on the world stage that it had once been. It was not a spiritual revolution
that was sought after, it was a military one. Israel, in the day of the
Messiah, would dominate their world once more.
So Israel
waited for the Messiah. And a belief began to rise up among the people that
taught that if Israel could abstain from sin for just one day, then the Messiah
would come. It was this belief that, at least in part, contributed to the rise
of the Pharisees, a political party of the Second Temple era. The Pharisees
prided themselves on being ordinary people, and taught that ordinary people had
as much of a responsibility to keep the Law of Moses as those born into a
priestly or royal family. One saying of the Pharisees aimed at this concept was
that “a learned mamzer (a child born from a sinful union – such as adultery or
incest - and was therefore by law considered to be an outcast of the society) takes
precedence over an ignorant High Priest.” The Pharisees were loved partially because
they were common, and yet strived for something more.
Zechariah,
writing a couple of centuries before the rise of the Pharisees spoke directly
into this belief of the Pharisees. First, he wrote about the coming of the
Messiah. Joshua’s stone with seven eyes borrows its imagery from Isaiah’s
trusted and tried cornerstone (Isaiah 28:16) and the imagery would be picked up
again in the New Testament as the “living Stone – rejected by humans but chosen
by God and precious to him” (1 Peter 2:4). This stone was the Messiah, and the
Pharisees had it exactly right, the Messiah was going to come for everyone. In
the day of the Messiah, all of the distinctions were going to be wiped away and
a “learned (or faithful) mamzer would take precedence over an ignorant High
Priest (or pastor or church leader).”
But there
was also error. According to Zechariah, it was not the people that needed to be
without sin for one day before the Messiah would come. God was not waiting for
the nation to mimic the Pharisee’s ethical holiness – not that there was
anything bad about the Pharisees commitment to live according to the laws and
desires of God. What we often miss is that Pharisees legalism was not in and of
itself a problem. The law was given so that the people could follow it, it was
given so that the people would profit by it. But it was not the people that
were going to erase sin in one day – it was God.
The seven
eyes represent the perfect vision of the Messiah, and the inscription and the
wiping away of the sin of the people was accomplished on the day that Jesus
Christ died on a cross for us. The terrible truth of the Scripture is simply
this – what we were unable to do on our own behalf, God did for us in the sending
his son to take on our flesh and die in our place. It was not expected to be
this way – but the Messiah came, and he dealt finally with the sin of the
people.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading:
Zechariah 4
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